Robert Wiblin has drawn my
attention to
this very interesting paper by the economic historian Gregory Clark, which
argues that over multiple generations there is a class ‘regression to the mean’,
with the inequalities of one generation washing out over time.

Clark’s method is to use English records of surnames, which can be used to
roughly trace the class progress of people with different family names. Some
surnames reveal class backgrounds because they are taken from medieval
occupations (eg Smith, Clerk/Clark, Shepherd, Cooper, Carter). Clark furthers
his study by studying the names in records of wills, tax payments, and court
appearances. Over time, the share of names appearing in lists of those with
large estates or criminal defendants can roughly track class progress.

What Clark finds is that England over the 800 years from 1200 was without
persistent social classes. The handful of aristocratic families who can trace
their family trees back centuries are outliers.

I will be very interested to see what other historians make of Clark’s thesis.
Over the last 250 years I find it intuitively reasonably plausible that there
are very high levels of multi-generational class mobility. The modern industrial
world created many opportunities for social and economic advancement, and
relatively speaking devalued the traditional source of wealth, holdings of
agricultural land. But high mobility in the earlier period conflicts with my
(admittedly superficial) understanding of the pre-modern world.

It goes against my priors as well, especially claims like " It was a world of complete social mobility... It was, despite all appearances, a world of complete equal
opportunity." Here's more from the paper:

Was there ever a Ruling Class? Surnames and Social Mobility in
England, 1200-2009, by Gregory Clark, January 25,
2010: Abstract This paper reports on a preliminary investigation of surname
distributions as a measure long run social mobility. In England this suggests
two surprising claims. First, England, all the way from the heart of the Middle
Ages in 1200 to 2009, is a society without persistent social classes, at least
among the descendants of the medieval population. It was a world of complete
social mobility, with no permanent over-class and under-class, a world of
complete equal opportunity. However, for some recent immigrant groups it may no
longer be true. Instead of moving from a world of immobility and class rigidity
in medieval England to a world of equal opportunity, we may have moved in the
opposite direction. Other modern societies such as the US and Brazil also show
sign of persistent social classes. There was, however, a gain from being in the
upper class in any generation in the form of leaving more copies of your DNA
permanently in later populations.

Introduction

In 1886 Francis Galton – the famous anthropologist, eugenicist,
geographer, inventor, meteorologist, polymath, statistician, tropical
explorer, and second cousin of Darwin – published a fabulous discovery which he labeled
“regression towards mediocrity.”1 Galton’s paper showed the tendency of
both tall and short parents to have children whose heights tended towards the mean of the
society. This might seem small potatoes, but Galton had uncovered a general process
– regression to the mean - with potentially profound social implications, since it
applies to all personal characteristics including education, IQ, income and wealth. It
is a process that has led free-market economists such as Gary Becker to proclaim

Almost all earnings advantages and disadvantages of ancestors
are wiped out in three generations. Poverty would not seem to be a “culture” that
persists for several generations2

If Becker is correct Galton’s discovering shows that there
cannot now be social classes – meaning persistent groups of privileged and poor – in
meritocratic societies such as England and the USA where regression to the mean is
strong. Within a few generations, a very few generations, there must be a complete
churning of the society: the descendants of the poorest and the richest will be
equally represented. Whatever its appearance in the small, we live in a profoundly
egalitarian society once we move to the scale of generations. Class is the illusion of
the moment.3

Yet even now we live in a world where the average person has a
strong belief in the reality and persistence of class. We all know there is some
social mobility. But we assume still that the children at Choate, Hotchkiss and
Groton, or at Eton, Harrow and Rugby, are mainly drawn from some timeless elite.
When we see pictures of inner city deprivation we do not think these are the
ultimate offspring of middle class households like our own. Rather we assume them the
latest generation of a permanent and persistent underclass, which thankfully our
own descendants will never inhabit.

English historians, similarly, while debating the degree to
which the preindustrial English upper classes were an “open” elite, still assume that

The English elite of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
was full of old families….Great families, often growing more prosperous and
prestigious over time but important even in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and
frequently retaining their original patrimony….Many of their names are familiar to any
student of English history: Berkeley, Cavendish, Courtenay, Herbert, Howard,
Lowther, Manners, Pelham, Stanley, and Talbot. (Wasson,
1998, 35).

Elite society was not closed to new entrants, but it had long
persisting members. Our impression of long run social rigidity is reinforced by the
accounts of families such as that of the Earls of Derby. The current Earl of Derby,
Edward Richard William Stanley, 19th Earl, can trace his family back to Ligulf
of Aldithley, an English landowner who appears in the Domesday Book. His
ancestors include Thomas Stanley, the 1st Earl of Derby, 1435–1504, who crowned
Henry VII after Battle of Bosworth Field and Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of
Derby, 1799-1869, Prime Minister of the United Kingdon, 1852, 1858-9, and 1866-8.
A family that can survive 29 generations at the upper reaches of English society
implies a strong social rigidity, and persistent social classes.

Social mobility is, of course, a matter of keen interest to all
upper class parents in any society. While we celebrate mobility in the abstract, we
struggle ferociously in the concrete to frustrate it. At the personal level we
desperately hope that there is a ruling class, and that our children and grandchildren can remain
within its warm embrace. We do not see the future of our offspring as an
eventual decline back to mediocrity.

The central question this paper addresses is whether this is a
grand illusion? Was there ever – even in the dark heart of medieval England - a
ruling class? A ruling class, that is, in the sense of a persistent, upper class,
strata within the society? Was there, in conjunction, even in the era of lord and serf, ever a
persistent underclass? Can most members of the group with the top ten percent of
incomes now trace their origins to the ruling class of medieval England? Can most
members of the bottom ten percent of the income distribution trace their origins to
the landless laborers of the medieval manor? Similarly was there ever a criminal
underclass?

What we will learn are two astonishing things. First, pre–modern England, all the way from 1200 to at least 2009, was a society without
persistent social classes. It was a world of complete social mobility, with no permanent
over-class and underclass. It was, despite all appearances, a world of complete equal
opportunity. George Orwell could not be more incorrect when he observed:

England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and
privilege (George Orwell, 1941).

Second, persistent social classes have only emerged in societies
like England and the United States in recent years. We congratulate ourselves
that we have created a meritocracy with access for all compared to the bad old days.
Yet instead of moving from a world of immobility and class rigidity to a world of
complete mobility we have moved in the opposite direction. The US, for example, now
exhibits persistent upper and under classes and there are indications that the same
may be true for modern Britain. Why this has happened is, of course, of
considerable interest and concern. ...
______________________

1 Galton, 1886. Galton had announced initial observation
on regression to the mean with sweet pea sizes in 1877, but in the 1886 paper he announced the
finding as a general law applying to all hereditary traits.

2 Becker and Tomes, 1986, S32. Gary Solon and others have
since established that regression to the mean is less strong than Becker and Tomes
believed. But that just means the quote would need to be amended to “wiped out in five
generations.” See Solon, 1999, Bowles and Gintis, 2002.

3 The dystopic vision of Herrnstein and Murray, 1996, of
a modern society divided into classes based on genetically transmitted IQ has also been
criticized as incompatible with the strong observed regression to the mean of all human traits.

Robert Wiblin has drawn my
attention to
this very interesting paper by the economic historian Gregory Clark, which
argues that over multiple generations there is a class ‘regression to the mean’,
with the inequalities of one generation washing out over time.

Clark’s method is to use English records of surnames, which can be used to
roughly trace the class progress of people with different family names. Some
surnames reveal class backgrounds because they are taken from medieval
occupations (eg Smith, Clerk/Clark, Shepherd, Cooper, Carter). Clark furthers
his study by studying the names in records of wills, tax payments, and court
appearances. Over time, the share of names appearing in lists of those with
large estates or criminal defendants can roughly track class progress.

What Clark finds is that England over the 800 years from 1200 was without
persistent social classes. The handful of aristocratic families who can trace
their family trees back centuries are outliers.

I will be very interested to see what other historians make of Clark’s thesis.
Over the last 250 years I find it intuitively reasonably plausible that there
are very high levels of multi-generational class mobility. The modern industrial
world created many opportunities for social and economic advancement, and
relatively speaking devalued the traditional source of wealth, holdings of
agricultural land. But high mobility in the earlier period conflicts with my
(admittedly superficial) understanding of the pre-modern world.

It goes against my priors as well, especially claims like " It was a world of complete social mobility... It was, despite all appearances, a world of complete equal
opportunity." Here's more from the paper:

Was there ever a Ruling Class? Surnames and Social Mobility in
England, 1200-2009, by Gregory Clark, January 25,
2010: Abstract This paper reports on a preliminary investigation of surname
distributions as a measure long run social mobility. In England this suggests
two surprising claims. First, England, all the way from the heart of the Middle
Ages in 1200 to 2009, is a society without persistent social classes, at least
among the descendants of the medieval population. It was a world of complete
social mobility, with no permanent over-class and under-class, a world of
complete equal opportunity. However, for some recent immigrant groups it may no
longer be true. Instead of moving from a world of immobility and class rigidity
in medieval England to a world of equal opportunity, we may have moved in the
opposite direction. Other modern societies such as the US and Brazil also show
sign of persistent social classes. There was, however, a gain from being in the
upper class in any generation in the form of leaving more copies of your DNA
permanently in later populations.